A post on a regular contributor’s own blog* prompted me to again look at the concept of ‘Say it once, say it correctly’.
I believe that this notion (as many others), will only work when a combination of factors come together, tools, work methods, culture.
I point to FlatCAD as the entity that (a long time ago) put down the foundations for a way to tackle this issue. A pretty good base it was too.
Petty it was underutilised by most practitioners, often totally misused.
Still, systems and processes have existed for years and in the regular digital environment to link up, xref, group, create libraries and custom applications, all in place to reduce duplication within project information.
‘Read it on whatever-number-of-places you like, be able to assume it all came from one place.’ was the goal (I believe).
Two things were missing: policing and trust.
The first step I do when I assess a set of documents, is to look at the grid system.
Is it present, properly defined and consistent?
I can report, that 9 out of 10 times there ARE issues with the grids.
From the moment I discover one issue with the grid, I am on guard.
Not necessary because of the single reference behaving badly, but because it will most likely signal systematic disregard for consistency within the project data.
* htpp://littlebim.blogspot.com from Lighthart
Hi, Zolna -
ReplyDeleteI missed this post when it first went up. Thanks for the "plug", and good point. If the grid, the reference from which all locations (should) spring is goofy, it puts every location in question.
Before even looking at grids, I look for the origin (0,0,0). Is it in a place that makes sense? Does the grid system start there? Then I go look at the rest of the grid system.